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THE 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 



Cije $mtt nf |nnrtij.-»u. 1. 



THE 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT 



SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL 



AS THE FINAL DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANTISM, 
DEMOCRACY, AND SOCIALISM. 


STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 






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NEW YORK: 



PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM. J. BANER. 

201 WILLIAM STREET. 
SOLD BY ALL, BOOKSELLERS. 

1851. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congrcis, in the year 1851, by 

WILLIAM J. BANES, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District 
of New York. 



6TEREOTYPED nV WILLIAM J. BANEB, 

201 William Street. 



INTRODUCTION 



This little treatise on the True Constitution of Government 
was delivered as one of the regular course of lectures before 
the New York Mechanics' Institute, for the present winter. 
It is now published as the introductory number of a contemplated 
series of publications, presenting certain new principles of so- 
ciety, which it is the belief of the author are eminently adapted 
to supply the felt want of the present day for an adequate so- 
lution of the existing social disturbances. For the principles 
in question, either as original discoveries, or else as presented 
in a new light, as solvents of the knotty questions which are 
now puzzling the most capacious minds and afflicting the most 
benevolent hearts of Christendom, the author confesses his 
very great indebtedness, and he believes the world will yet 
gladly confess its indebtedness, to the genius of JosiAn War- 
ren, of Indiana, who has been engaged for more than twenty 
years in testing, almost in solitude, the practical operation, in 
the education of children, in the sphere of commerce, and oth- 
erwise, of the principles which we are now for the first time 
presenting prominently to the public. 

It has been the belief of the author, that there are in the ranks 
of those who are denominated Conservatives many who sym- 
pathize deeply with the objects of radical reform, but who have 
never identified themselves with the movements in that direc- 
tion, either because they have not seen that the. practical meas- 
ures proposed by the advocates of reform contained the ele- 
ments of success, or else because they have distinctly perceived 
or intuitively felt that they did not. They may have been re- 
pelled, too, by the want of completeness in the programme, the 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

want of scientific exactness in the principles announced, or, 
finally, by the want of a lucid conception of the real nature of 
the remedy which is needed for the manifold social evils of 
which ail confess the existence in the actual condition of society. 
If there are minds in this position, minds more rigid than others 
in their demands for precise and philosophical principles pre- 
liminary to action, it is from such that the author anticipates the 
most cordial reception of the elements propounded by Mr. 
Warren, so soon as they are seen in their connections and in- 
terrelations with each other. 

Believing that these principles will justify the assumption, I 
have ventured to place at the head of this series of publications 
as a general title, " The Science of Society." 

The propriety of the use of the term " Science," in such a 
connection, may be questioned by some whom habit lias accus- 
tomed to apply that term to a much lower range of investiga- 
tions. If researches into the habits of beetles and tadpoles, and 
their localities and conditions of existence, are entitled to the 
dignified appellation of Science, certainly similar researches 
into the nature, the wants, the adaptations, and, so to speak, 
into the true or requisite moral and social habitat of the spirit- 
ual animal called Man, must be, if conducted according to the 
rigid methods of scientific induction from observed facts, equally 
entitled to that distinction. 

The series of works, of which this is the first in order, will 
deal in no vague aspirations after "the good time coming." 
Tkey will propound definite principles which demand to be re- 
garded as having all the validity of scientific truths, and which, 
taken in their co-relations with each other, are adequate to the 
solution of the social problem. If this pretension be made 
good, the importance of the subject will not be denied. If not 
well founded, the definiteness of the propositions mil be favor- 
able to a speedy and successful refutation. s. p. a. 

New York, January, 1851. 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

A LECTURE. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: 

The subject which I propose to consider this evening 
is the true constitution of human government. 

Every age is a remarkable one, no doubt, for those 
who live in it. When immobility reigns most in 
human affairs, there is still enough of movement to 
fix the attention, and even to excite the wonder of 
those who are immediately in proximity with it. This 
natural bias in favor of the period with which we 
have most to do, is by no means sufficient, however, to 
account for the growing conviction, on all minds, that 
the present epoch is a marked transition from an old to 
a new order of things. The scattered rays of the gray 
dawn of the new era date back, indeed, beyond the life- 
time of the present generation. The first streak of light 
that streamed through the dense darkness of the old 
regime was the declaration by Martin Luther of the 
right of private judgment in matters of conscience. 
The next, which shed terror upon the .old world, as a 
new portent of impending revolutions, was the denial, 
by Hampden, Sidney, Cromwell, and others, of the 
divine right of kings, and the assertion of inherent 



8 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

political rights in the people themselves. This was 
followed by the American Declaration of Independence, 
the establishment of a powerful Democratic Republic in 
the western world upon the basis of that principle, fol- 
lowed by the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, the 
Reaction, and the apparent death in Europe of the 
Democratic idea. Finally, in our day, comes the red 
glare of French Socialism, at which the world is still 
gazing with uncertainty whether it be some lurid and 
meteoric omen of fearful events, or whether it be not 
the actual rising of the Sun of Righteousness, with heal- 
ing in His wings ; for there are those who profoundly 
and religiously believe that the solution of the social 
problem will be the virtual descent of the New Jerusa- 
lem — the installation of the kingdom of heaven upon 
earth. 

First in the religious, then in the political, and finally 
in the social relations of men, new doctrines have thus 
been broached, which are full of promise to the hopeful, 
and full of alarm and dismay to the timid and conserv- 
ative. This distinction marks the broadest division in 
the ranks of mankind. In church, and state, and social 
life, the real parties are the Progressionists and the Re- 
trogressionists — those whose most brilliant imaginings 
are linked with the future, and those whose sweetest 
remembrances bind them in tender associations to the 
past. Catholic and Protestant, Whig and Democrat, 
Anti-Socialist and Socialist, are terms which, in their 
origin, correspond to this generic division ; but no sooner 
does a new classification take place than the parties 
thus formed are again subdivided, on either hand, by 
the ever-permeating tendency, on the one side toward 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 9 

freedom, emancipation, and progress, and toward law, 
and order, and immobility on the other. 

Hitherto the struggle between conservatism and pro- 
gress has seemed doubtful. Victory has kissed the ban- 
ner, alternately, of either host. At length the serried 
ranks of conservatism falter. Reform, so called, is 
becoming confessedly more potent than its antagonist. 
The admission is reluctantly forced from pallid lips that 
revolutions — political, social, and religious — constitute 
the programme of the coming age. .Reform, so called, 
for weal or woe, but yet Reform, must rule the hour. 
The older constitutions of society have outlived their 
day. No truth commends itself more universally to 
the minds of men now, than that thus set forth by Car- 
lyle : " There must be a new world if there is to be 
any world at all. That human things in our Europe 
can ever return to the old sorry routine, and proceed 
with any steadiness or continuance there — this small 
hope is not now a tenable one. These days of universal 
death must be days of universal new birth if the ruin is 
not to be total and final ! It is a time to make the 
dullest man consider, and ask himself, Whence he came 1 ? 
Whither he is bound 1 A veritable ' New Era,' to the 
foolish as well as to the wise." Nor is this state of 
things confined to Europe. The agitations in America 
may be more peaceful, but they are not less profound. 
The foundations of old beliefs and habits of thought 
are breaking up. The old guarantees of order are fast 
falling away. A veritable " new era" with us, too, 
is alike impending and inevitable. 

What remains to be done, then, for wise men, is 
clearly this : to attempt to penetrate the future by in- 



10 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

vestigating the past and the present, to ascertain 
whether there be not elements of calculation capable of 
fixing with tolerable certainty the precise point in the 
sidereal heavens of human destiny, toward which our 
whole system is confessedly verging with accelerated 
velocity. To penetrate the gloom which encircles the 
orbit of our future progression, might, at least, end the 
torture of suspense, even to those who may be least 
content with the nature of the solution. "If," says 
Carlyle again, " the accursed nightmare that is crush- 
ing out the life of us and ours, would take a shape, ap- 
proach us like the Hyrcanian tiger, the Behemoth of 
Caos, or the Archfiend himself — in any shape that we 
could see and fasten on — a man can have himself 
shot with cheerfulness, but it needs that he shall clearly 
see for what." 

It is, then, neither unbecoming nor inappropriate, at 
this time, to attempt to prognosticate, by philosophical 
deductions from operative principles, the characteristics 
of the new society which is to be constructed out of the 
fragments of the old. It is, perhaps, only right that I 
should begin by declaring the general nature of the re- 
sults to which my own mind is conducted by the specu- 
lations I have made upon the subject, and toward which 
I shall, so far as I may, endeavor, this evening, to sway 
your convictions. 

I avow, that for one, I take the hopeful, the expectant, 
even the exulting view of the prospects of humanity, 
under the influence of causes which, to the minds of 
many, are pregnant with evil. I hail the progress of 
that unsparing criticism of old institutions which is the 
characteristic of the present age. I hail with still 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 11 

higher enthusiasm, a dim outline which begins to be 
perceived by the keenest vision, through the twilight 
mists which yet hang upon the surrounding hilltops of 
a social fabric, whose foundations are equity, whose 
ceiling is security, whose pillars are co-operation and 
fraternity, and whose capitals and cornices are carved 
into the graceful forms of mutual urbanity and polite- 
ness. It is just to you that I should announce this 
faith, that you may receive the vaticinations of the 
prophet, with due allowance for the inebriation of the 
prophetic rhapsody. I proclaim myself in some sense 
a visionary ; but in all ages there have been visionaries 
whose visions of to-day have proved the substantial re- 
alities of to-morrow. 

I shall make no apology for the rashness of the at- 
tempt to trace, with a distinct outline, some of the gi- 
gantic changes which will occur in the social organiza- 
tion of the world as the necessary outgrowth of princi- 
ples now at work, and which are becoming every day 
more potential, in proportion as forces, which have 
hitherto been deemed antagonistic, converge and co- 
operate. 

I affirm, then, firstly, that there is at this day a 
marked convergence and a prospective co-operation of 
principles which have hitherto resisted each other, or, 
more properly, a development of one common principle 
in spheres of life so diverse from each other that they 
have hitherto been regarded as 'unrelated, if not posi- 
tively antagonistic. I assert, and shall endeavor to 
make good the assertion, that the essential spirit, the 
vital and fundamental principle of the three great mod- 
ern movements to which I have already alluded, namely, 



12 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

the Protestant Reformation, the Democratic Revolution, 
still progressing, and, finally, the Socialist Agitation, 
which is spreading in multiform varieties of reproduc- 
tion over the whole civilized world, is one and the 
same, and that this common affinity is beginning in 
various ways to be recognized or felt. If this assertion 
be true, it is one of immense significance. If Protest- 
antism, Democracy, and Socialism are merely different 
expressions of the same idea, then, undoubtedly, the 
confluent force of these three movements will expand 
tremendously the sweep of their results, in the direc- 
tion toward which they collectively tend. 

What, then, if this be so, is this common element 1 
In what great feature are Protestantism, Democracy, 
and Socialism identical ? I will answer this interroga- 
tory first, and demonstrate the answer afterward. 
Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism are identical 
in the assertion of the Supremacy of the Individual — a 
dogma essentially contumacious, revolutionary, and an- 
tagonistic to the basis principles of all the older institu- 
tions of society, which make the Individual subordinate 
and subject to the Church, to the State, and to Society 
respectively. Not only is this supremacy or sovereign- 
ty of the individual a common element of all three 
of these great modern movements, but I will make the 
still more sweeping assertion, that it is substantially the 
whole of those movements. It is not merely a feature 
as I have just denominated it, but the living soul itself, 
the vital energy, the integral essence or being of them 
all. 

Protestants and Protestant churches may differ in 
relation to every other article of their creed, and do so 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 13 

differ, without ceasing to be Protestants, so long as they 
assert the paramount right of private or individual 
judgment in matters of conscience. It is that, and 
that only, which makes them Protestants, and distin- 
guishes them from the Catholic world, which asserts, 
on the contrary, the supreme authority of the church, 
of the priesthood, or of some dignitary or institution 
other than the Individual whose judgment and whose 
conscience is in question. In like manner, Democrats 
and Democratic governments and institutions may differ 
from each other, and may vary infinitely at different 
periods of time, and still remain Democratic, so long 
as they maintain the one essential principle and condi- 
tion of Democracy, namely, that all governmental pow- 
ers reside in, are only delegated by, and can be, at any 
moment, resumed by the people — that is, by the indi- 
viduals^ who are first Individuals, and who then, by 
virtue only of the act of delegating such powers, be- 
come a people , that is, a combined mass of Individuals. 
It is this dogma, and this alone, which makes the Dem- 
ocrat, and which distinguishes him from the Despotist, 
or the defender of the divine right of kings. 

Again, Socialism assumes every shade and variety 
of opinion respecting the modes of realizing its own 
aspirations, and, indeed, upon every other point, except 
one, which, when investigated, will be found to be the 
paramount rights of the Individual over social institu- 
tions ; and the consequent demand that all existing social 
institutions shall be so modified that the Individual shall 
be in no manner subjected to them. This, then, is the 
identical principle of Protestantism and Democracy 
carried into its application in another sphere. The 



14 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

celebrated formula of Fourier, that " destinies are pro- 
portioned to attractions," means, when translated into 
less technical phraseology, that society must be so re- 
organized, that every Individual shall be empowered to 
choose and vary his own destiny or condition and pur- 
suits in life, untrammeled by social restrictions ; in 
other words, so that every man may be a law unto him- 
self, paramount to all other human laws, and the sole 
judge for himself of the divine law and of the requisi- 
tions of his own individual nature and organization. 
This is equally the fundamental principle of all the 
social theories, except in the case of the Shakers, the 
Rappites, etc., which are based upon religious whims, 
demanding submission, as matter of duty, to a despotic 
rule, and which embody, in another form, the readoption 
of the popish or conservative principle. They, there- 
fore, while they live in a form of society similar in 
some respects to those which have been proposed by 
the various schools of Socialists, are, in fact, neither 
Protestants nor Democrats, and, consequently, not So- 
cialists in the sense in which I am now defining Social- 
ism. The forms of society proposed by Socialism are 
the mere shell of the doctrine — means to the end — a 
platform upon which to place the Individual, in order 
that he may be enabled freely to exercise his own Indi- 
viduality, which is the end and aim of all. We have 
seen that the shell is one which may be inhabited by 
despotism. Possibly it is unfit for the habitation of 
any thing else than despotism, which the Socialist 
hopes, by ensconcing himself therein, to escape. It is 
possible, even, that Socialism may have mistaken its 
measures altogether, and that the whole system of As- 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 15 

sociation and combined interests and combined respon- 
sibilities proposed by it, may be essentially antagonistic 
to the very ends proposed. All this, however, if it be 
so, is merely incidental. It belongs to the shell, and 
not to the substance — to the means, and not to the 
end. The whole programme of Socialism may yet be 
abandoned or reversed, and yet Socialism remain in 
substance the same thing. What Socialism demands, 
is the emancipation of the Individual from social bond- 
age, by whatsoever means will effect that design, in the 
same manner as Protestantism demands the emancipa- 
tion of the Individual from ecclesiastical bondage, and 
Democracy from political. Whosoever makes that de- 
mand, or labors to that end, is a Socialist. Any par- 
ticular views he may entertain, distinguishing him from 
other Socialists, regarding practical measures, or the 
ultimate forms of society, are the mere specific differ- 
ences, like those which divide the Protestant sects of 
Christendom. 

This definition of Socialism may surprise some into 
the discovery of the fact, that they have been Social- 
ists all along, unawares. Some, on the other hand, 
who have called themselves Socialists, may not at once 
be inclined to accept the definition. They may not 
perceive clearly that it is the emancipation of the In- 
dividual for which they are laboring, and affirm that it 
is, on the other hand, the freedom and happiness of 
the race. They will not, however, deny that it is 
both; and a very little reflection will show that the 
freedom and happiness of each individual will be the 
freedom and happiness of the race, and that the free- 
dom and happiness of the race can not exist so long a* 



16 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

there is any individual of the race who is not happy 
and free. So the Protestant and the Democrat may 
not always have a clear intellectual perception of the dis- 
tinctive principle of their creeds. He may be attached 
to it from an instinctive sentiment, which he has never 
thoroughly analyzed, or 'even from the mere accidents 
of education and birth. 

Protestantism proclaims that the Individual has an 
inalienable right to judge for himself in all matters of 
conscience. Democracy proclaims that the Individual 
has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness. Socialism proclaims that the Individual 
has an inalienable right to that social position which 
his powers and natural organization qualify him, and 
which his tastes incline him to fill, and, consequently, 
to that constitution or arrangement of the property re- 
lations, and other relations of society, whatsoever that 
may be, which will enable him to enjoy and exercise 
that right — the adaptation of social conditions to the 
wants of each Individual, with all his peculiarities and 
fluctuations of taste, instead of the moulding of the 
Individual into conformity with the rigid requirements 
of a preconcerted social organization. 

If this be a correct statement of the essential nature 
of Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism, then Prot- 
estantism, Democracy, and Socialism are not actuated 
by three distinct principles at all. They are simply 
three partial announcements of one generic principle, 
which lies beneath all these movements, and of which 
they are the legitimate outgrowths or developments, 
modified only by the fact of a different application of 
the same principle. This great generic principle, which 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 17 

underlies every manifestation of that universal unrest 
and revolution, which is known technically in this age 
as " Progress," is nothing more nor less than " The 
Sovereignty of the Individual." It is that which 
is the central idea and vital principle of Protestantism ; 
it is that which is the central idea and vital principle 
of Democracy ; and it is that which is the central idea 
and vital principle of Socialism. 

This being so, it is high time that the mutual affinity 
of these movements should be intelligently perceived 
and recognized both by the friends and the enemies of 
the movements themselves. It is high time that the 
scene of the battle-field should be shifted from the 
right or wrong of any or all of the partial developments 
of the principle to the essential right or wrong of the 
principle itself. The true issue is not whether Prot- 
estantism be good or evil, whether Democracy be good 
or evil, nor whether Socialism be good or evil, but 
whether the naked, bald, unlimited principle of the 
Sovereignty of the Individual, in human government 
and the administration of human affairs, be essentially 
good and true or essentially pernicious and false. This 
is the issue now up for trial before the world, and the 
definitive decision of which must be had before the 
final destiny of mankind upon earth can be even rough- 
hewn by the most vivid imagination, and certainly be- 
fore any thing approximating scientific deduction re- 
specting it can be had. 

You will please to consider yourselves, Ladies and 
Gentlemen, as a jury empannelled to try this issue. I 
take my position before you as the advocate of the 
Sovereignty of the Individual, and the defender of the 



18 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

spirit of the present age. If this principle be essen- 
tially good and true, then it may be trusted wherever 
it leads, and the general drift of what the world calls 
" Progress" is in the right direction, whatever mistakes 
may be made in matters of detail. If it is a false 
principle, the sooner we understand that fact the bet- 
ter ; but let it be also understood in that case, that we 
have much to undo which has been already done, and 
which has been supposed to be well done, in these mod- 
ern times. In that case, Protestantism is all wrong, 
and Democracy is all wrong ; the Whateleys, the Wise- 
mans, the Bronsons, the Windischgratzes, and the Hay- 
naus are philosophers and philanthropists of the right 
school ; and the Luthers, the Channings, the Jeffersons, 
the Washingtons, and the Kossuths are the world's 
worst foes — the betrayers and scourgers which the 
wrath of an offended Heaven has let loose upon earth, 
first to delude, and then to punish mankind for their sins. 
I will first endeavor to set before you a clearer view 
of the doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual, 
as based upon the principle of the infinite Individuality 
of things. I will then show that this Sovereignty of 
the Individual furnishes the law of the development of 
human society, as illustrated in the progressive move- 
ments of modern times. Finally, I shall endeavor to 
trace the development which is hereafter to result from 
the further operation of this principle, and to fix, so 
nearly as may be, the condition of human affairs to- 
ward which it conducts, especially in that particular 
department of human affairs which constitutes the sub- 
ject of investigation this evening, namely, the govern- 
ment of mankind. 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 19 

The doctrine of the Sovereignty of the Individual — 
in one sense itself a principle — grows out of the still 
more fundamental principle of " Individuality, " 
which pervades universal nature. Individuality is 
positively the most fundamental and universal princi- 
ple which the finite mind seems capable of discovering, 
and the best image of the Infinite. There are no two 
objects in the universe which are precisely alike. Each 
has its own constitution and peculiarities, which distin- 
guish it from every other. Infinite diversity is the 
universal law. In the multitude of human counte- 
nances, for example, there are no two alike, and in the 
multitude of human characters there is the same vari- 
ety. The hour which your courtesy has assigned to me 
would be entirely consumed, if I were to attempt to ad- 
duce a thousandth part of the illustrations of this subtile 
principle of Individuality, which lie patent upon the 
face of nature, all around me. It applies equally to 
persons, to things, and to events. There have been no 
two occurrences which were precisely alike during all 
the cycling periods of time. No action, transaction, 
or set of circumstances whatsoever ever corresponded 
precisely to any other action, transaction, or set of cir- 
cumstances. Had I a precise knowledge- of all the oc- 
currences which have ever taken place up to this hour, 
it would not suffice to enable me to make a law which 
would be applicable in all respects to the very next oc- 
currence which shall take place, nor to any one of the 
infinite millions of events which shall hereafter occur. 
This diversity reigns throughout every kingdom of na- 
ture, and mocks at all human attempts to make laws, 
or constitutions, or regulations, or governmental insti- 



20 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

tutions of any sort, which shall work justly and har- 
moniously amidst the unforeseen contingencies of the 
future. ' 

The individualities of objects are least, or, at all 
events, they are less apparent, when the objects are 
inorganic or of a low grade of organization. The in- 
dividualities of the grains of sand which compose the 
beach, for example, are less marked than those of veg- 
etables, and those of vegetables are less than those of 
animals, and, finally, those of animals are less than 
those of man. In proportion as an object is more complex, 
it embodies a greater number of elements, and each 
element has its own individualities, or diversities, in 
every new combination into which it enters. Conse- 
quently these diversities are multiplied into each other, 
in the infinite augmentation of geometrical progression. 
Man, standing, then, at the head of the created uni- 
verse, is consequently the most complex creature in 
existence — every individual man or woman being a lit- 
tle world in him or herself, an image or reflection of 
God, an epitome of the Infinite. Hence the individual- 
ities of such a being are utterly immeasurable, and 
every attempt to adjust the capacities, the adaptations, 
the wants, or the responsibilities of one human being by 
the capacities, the adaptations, the wants, or the re- 
sponsibilities of another human being, except in the 
very broadest generalities, is unqualifiedly futile and 
hopeless. Hence every ecclesiastical, governmental, or 
social institution which is based on the idea of demand- 
ing conformity or likeness in any thing, has ever been, 
and ever will be, frustrated by the operation of this sub- 
tile, all-pervading principle of Individuality. Hence hu- 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 21 

man society has ever been and is still in the turmoil of 
revolution. The only alternative known has been between 
revolution and despotism. Revolutions violently burst 
the bonds, and explode the foundations of existing insti- 
tutions. The institution falls before the Individual. Des- 
potism only succeeds by denaturalizing mankind. It extin^ 
guishes their individualities only by extinguishing them. 
The Individual falls before the institution. Judge ye 
which is best, the man-made or the God-made thing. 

In the next place this Individuality is inherent and 
unconquerable, except, as I have just said, by extin- 
guishing the man himself. The man himself has no 
power over it. He can not divest himself of his organic 
peculiarities of character, any more than he can divest 
himself of his features. It attends him even in the 
effort he makes, if he makes any, to divest himself of 
it. He may as well attempt to flee his own shadow, as 
to rid himself of the indefeasible, God-given inheritance 
of his own Individuality. 

Finally, this indestructible and all-pervading Individ- 
uality furnishes, itself, the law, and the only true law, 
of order and harmony. Goverments have hitherto been 
established, and have apologized for the unseemly fact 
of their existence, from the necessity of establishing 
and maintaining order ; but order has never yet been 
maintained, revolutions and violent outbreaks have 
never yet been ended, public peace and harmony have 
never yet been secured, for the precise reason that the 
organic, essential, and indestructible natures of the 
objects which it was attempted to reduce to order have 
always been constricted and infringed by every such 
attempt. Just in proportion as the effort is less and 



22 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

less made to reduce men to order, just in that propor- 
tion they become more orderly, as witness the difference 
in the state of society in Austria and the United States. 
Plant an army of one hundred thousand soldiers in New 
York, as at Paris, to preserve the peace, and we should 
have a bloody revolution in a week ; and be assured that 
the only remedy for what little of turbulence remains 
among us, as compared with European societies, will be 
found to be more liberty. When there remain positively 
no external restrictions, there will be positively no dis- 
turbance, provided always certain regulating principles 
of justice, to which I shall advert presently, are ac- 
cepted and enter into the public mind, serving as sub- 
stitutes for every species of repressive laws. 

I was saying that Individuality is the essential law 
of order. This is true throughout the universe. When 
every individual particle of matter obeys the law of its 
own attraction, and comes into that precise position, 
and moves in that precise direction which its own inher- 
ent individualities demand, the harmony of the spheres 
is evolved. By that means only natural. classification, 
natural order, natural organization, natural harmony 
and agreement is attained. Every scheme or arrange- 
ment which is based upon the principle of thwarting 
the inherent affinities of the individual monads which 
compose any system or organism is essentially vicious, 
and the organization is false — a mere bundle of revolu- 
tionary and antagonistic atoms. It is time that human 
system builders should begin to discover this universal 
truth. The principle is self-evident. Objects bound 
together contrary to their nature, must and will seek to 
rectify themselves by breaking the bonds which confine 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 23 

them, while those which come together by their own 
affinities remain quiescent and content. Let human 
system makers of all sorts, then, admit the principle 
of an infinite Individuality among men, which can not 
be suppressed, and which must be indulged and fostered, 
at all events, as one element in the solution of the prob- 
lem they have before them. If they are unable to see 
clearly how all external restrictions can be removed 
with safety to the well-being of society, let them, never- 
theless, not abandon a principle which is self-evident, 
but let them modestly suspect that there may be some 
other elements in the solution of the same problem, 
which their sagacity has not yet enabled them to dis- 
cover. In all events, and at all hazards, this Individ- 
uality of every member of the human family must be 
recognized and indulged, because first, as we have seen, 
it is infinite, and can not be measured or prescribed for ; 
then, because it is inherent, and can not be conquered ; 
and, finally, because it is the essential element of order, 
and can not, consequently, be infringed without engen- 
dering infinite confusion, such as has hitherto universally 
reigned, in the administration of human affairs. 

If, now, Individuality is a universal law which must 
be obeyed if we would have order and harmony in any 
sphere, and, consequently, if we would have a true con- 
stitution of human government, then the absolute Sov- 
ereignty of the Individual necessarily results. The 
monads or atoms of which human society is composed 
are the individual men and women in it. They must 
be so disposed of, as we have seen, in order that society 
may be harmonic, that the destiny of each shall be 
controlled by his or her own individualities of taste, 



24 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

conscience, intellect, capacities, and will. But man is 
a being endowed with consciousness. He, and no one 
else, knows the determining force of his own attractions. 
No one else can therefore decide for him, and hence 
Individuality can only become the law of human action 
by securing to each individual the sovereign determina- 
tion of his own judgment and of his own conduct, in all 
things, with no right reserved either of punishment or 
censure on the part of any body else whomsoever ; and 
this is what is meant by the Sovereignty of the Indi- 
vidual, limited only by the ever-accompanying condition, 
resulting from the equal Sovereignty of all others, that 
the onerous consequences of his actions be assumed by 
himself. 

If my audience were composed chiefly of Catholics, or 
Monarchists, or Anti-Progressionists of any sort, I 
should develop this argument more at length, for as I 
have said, it is the real issue, and the only real issue 
between the reformatory and the conservative portions 
of mankind ; but I suppose that I may, with propriety, 
assume that I am before an auditory who are in the 
main Protestant and Democratic, and assuming that, I 
shall then be authorized to assume, in accordance with 
the principles I have endeavored to develop, that they 
are likewise substantially Socialist, according to the 
definition I have given to Socialism, whether they have 
hitherto accepted or repudiated the name. It is 
enough, however, if I address you as Protestants and 
Democrats, or as either of these. I shall therefore as- 
sume, without further dwelling upon the fundamental 
statement of those principles, that you are ready to 
admit so much of Individuality and of the Sovereignty 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 25 

of the Individual as is necessarily involved in the pro- 
positions of Protestantism or Democracy. I shall as- 
sume that I am before an assembly of men and women 
who sympathize with ecclesiastical and political en- 
franchisement — who believe that what the world calls 
Progress, in these modern times, is in the main real and 
not sham progress, a genuine and legitimate develop- 
ment of the race. Instead, therefore, of pursuing the 
main argument further, I will return to, and endeavor 
more fully to establish, a position which I have already 
assumed, namely, that by virtue of the fact of being 
either a Protestant or a Democrat, you have admitted 
away the whole case, and that you are fully committed 
to the whole doctrine of Individuality and the Sover- 
eignty of the Individual, wherever that may lead. 

I assert, then, the doctrine of Individuality, in its 
broadest and most unlimited sense. I assert that the 
law of genuine progress in human affairs is identical 
with the tendency to individualize. In ecclesiastical 
affairs it is the breaking up of the Church into sects, 
the breaking up of the larger sects into minor sects, the 
breaking up of the minor sectf>, by continual schism, into 
still minuter fragments of sects, and, finally, a complete 
disintegration of the whole mass into individuals, at 
which point every human being becomes his own sect 
and his own church. Does it require any demonstra- 
tion that this is the natural tendency and the legitimate 
development of Protestantism, that it is in fact the ne- 
cessary and inevitable outgrowth of its own fundament- 
al principle. The History of all Religions in Protest- 
ant Christendom is becoming already too voluminous to 
be written. With the multiplication of sects grows the 



26 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

spirit of toleration, which is nothing else but the recog- 
nition of the sovereignty of others. A glance at the 
actual condition of the Protestant Church demonstrates 
the tendency to the obliteration of Sectarianism by the 
very superabundance of sects. 

In the political sphere the individualizing tendency 
of Democracy is exhibited in the distribution of the 
departments of government into the hands of different 
depositaries of power, the discrimination of the chief 
functions of government into the Legislature, the Exec- 
utive, and the Judiciary, in the division of the Legis- 
lature into distinct branches, in the representative sys- 
tem which recognizes the Individuality of different con- 
federated states, and of different portions of the same 
state, in the divorce of the Church and State, and yet 
more strikingly than all, in the successive surrender to 
the Individual of one branch after another of what was 
formerly regarded as the legitimate business of gov- 
ernment. 

Under the old order of things, government interfered 
to determine the trade or occupation of the Individual, 
to settle his religious faith, to regulate his locomotion, 
to prescribe his hours of relaxation and retirement, the 
length of his beard, the cut of his apparel, his relative 
rank, the mode of his social intercourse, and so on con- 
tinuously, until government was in fact every thing, and 
the Individual nothing. Democracy, working somewhat 
blindly, it is true, but yet guided by a true instinct, 
begotten by its own great indwelling vital principle, the 
Sovereignty of the Individual, has already substantially 
revolutionized all that. It has swept away, for the 
most part, in America at least, the impertinent inter- 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 27 

ference of government with the pursuits, the religious 
opinions and ceremonies, the travel, the amusements, 
the dress, and the manners of the citizen. One whole 
third of the field heretofore occupied by government 
has thus been surrendered to the Individual. To this 
point we have already attained, practically, at the pre- 
cise stage at which we now are in the transition from 
the past to the future model of the organization of 
society. 

But the principle of Democracy does not stop here. 
Government still interferes, even in these United States, 
in some instances, with the social and political status 
of the Individual, as in the case of slavery, with com- 
merce, with the title to the soil, with the validity of 
private obligations, with the treatment of crime, and, 
finally, with the marriage and parental relationships of 
the citizen ; and it is obviously an incongruous fact, that 
it interferes with all these, in many instances at least, 
to the great annoyance of the citizen, who, according to 
our political theory, is himself the sovereign, and con- 
sequently the voluntary fabricator of that which annoys 
him. To the philosophical mind there is that in this 
incongruity alone, which predicts the ultimate emanci- 
pation of the citizen from the restrictions of legislation 
and jurisprudence, in every aspect of his existence. 
Accordingly, there is another whole third of the domain 
hitherto occupied by Government which is at this mo- 
ment in dispute between it and the Individual. The 
whole of that legislation which establishes or tolerates 
that form of human bondage which is called slavery, is 
at this moment undergoing the most determined and 
vigorous onset of public opinion which any false and 



28 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

tyrannical institution of Government was ever called 
upon to endure. The full and final abolition of slavery 
can not but be regarded, by every reflecting mind, as 
prospectively certain. Such is the fiat of Democracy ; 
such is the inevitable sequitur from the Democratic 
premise of inherent political rights. Government in- 
terferes, again, to regulate commerce ; but what is the 
demand of Democracy in relation to that? Nothing 
short of absolute free trade. Democracy says to Gov- 
ernment, Hands off! Let the Individual determine 
for himself when, and where, and how he will buy and 
sell. Does any one doubt that Democracy will, in the 
long run, have its own way in relation to this matter 
as well, and that tariffs, and custom houses, and col- 
lectorships, and the whole lumbering paraphernalia of 
indirect taxation, which fences out the intercourse of 
nations, will be looked back upon, in a generation or 
two, in a light akin to that in which the police system 
of Fouche, the passport system of the despotic countries 
of Europe, and the censorship of the press are now re- 
garded by us. Government still interferes to control 
the public domain ; but already an organized and rapidly 
augmenting political organization is demanding in this 
country a surrender of this whole subject to the Individ- 
ual Sovereigns who make - the Government, and who need 
the land. Nor are the modest pretensions of Land Re- 
form, which as yet touch only the public domain, likely 
to end at that. The very foundation principles of the 
ownership of land, as vested in individuals and protected 
by law, can not escape much longer from a searching and 
radical investigation, and when that comes, the arbitrary 
legislation of Government will have to give place to such 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. Z\j 

natural and scientific principles regulating the subject 
as may be evolved. Land Reform, in its present aspect, 
is merely the prologue to a thorough and unsparing, but 
philosophical and equitable agrarianism, by means of 
which either the land itself, or an equal participation 
in the benefits of the land, shall be secured to the 
whole people. Science, not human legislation, must 
finally govern the distribution of the soil. Government, 
again, interferes with contracts and private obligations. 
But already the demand is growing loud for the aboli- 
tion of the usury laws, and a distant murmuring is 
overheard of the question, whether good faith and the 
maintenance of credit would not be promoted by dis- 
pensing with all laws for the collection of debts. Both 
the statesman and the citizen have observed, not with- 
out profound consideration, the significant fact that the 
fear of the law is less potential for the enforcement of 
obligations than commercial honor — that the protest of 
a notary, or even a whisper of suspicion on Change, is 
fraught with a cogency which neither a bench warrant 
nor a capias ad satisfaciendum ever possessed. Gov 
ernment still deals with criminals by the old-fashioned 
process of punishment, but both science and philan- 
thropy concur in pronouncing that the grand remedial 
agency for crime is prevention, and not cure. The 
whole theory of vindictive punishment is rapidly obso 
lescent. That theory once dead, all that remains of 
punishment is simply defensive. Imprisonment melts 
into the euphemism, detention ; and, while detained, the 
prisoner is treated tenderly, as a diseased or unfortunate 
person. Nor does Democracy stop at that. Democracy 
declares that liberty is an inalienable right, the inher- 



80 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

cnt prerogative of the Individual Sovereign, of which 
there is no possible defeasance, even by his own act. 
Democracy therefore claims, or will claim when it bet- 
ter understands the universality of its own pretension, 
either such conditions of society that criminals shall no 
longer be made, or else that some more delicate method 
of guardianship shall be devised which shall respect the 
dignity with which Democracy invests the Individual 
man. 

When the battles which are thus already waged in 
these various departments of human affairs between 
Government and the Individual shall have been finally 
fought and won, the domain of Government will have 
shrunk to the merest fragment of its old dimensions. 
Hardly any sphere of legislation, worthy of the name, 
will remain, save that of the marriage and parental 
relations. These are subjects of great delicacy, and 
form, ordinarily, an insuperable barrier to the freedom 
of investigation in this direction. It is in connection 
with these subjects that men shrink with dismay from 
what they understand to be the programme of Socialism. 
A brief consideration of the subject, conducted with the 
boldness and impartiality of science, will demonstrate, 
however, that the most extreme proposition of Socialism 
does not transcend, in the least, the legitimate opera- 
tion of the fundamental principle of either Protestant- 
ism or Democracy. There is that, both in one and the 
other, which, carried simply out to its logical and in- 
evitable conclusion, covers the whole case of marriage 
and the love relations, and completely emancipates them 
from the impertinent interference of human legislation. 
First, what says Protestantism'? Why, that the right 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 31 

of private judgment in matters of conscience is para- 
mount to all other authority whatsoever. But marriage 
has been, in all ages, a subject eminently under the 
dominion of conscience and the religious sense. Be- 
sides, it is one of the best recognized principles of high- 
toned religionism, that every action of the life is appro- 
priately made matter of conscience, inasmuch as the 
responsibility of the Individual toward God is held to 
extend to every, even the minutest thing, which the Indi- 
vidual does. No man, we are told, can answer for his 
brother. This, then, settles the whole question. It 
abandons the whole subject to the conscience of the 
Individual. It implies the charge of a spiritual despot- 
ism, wholly unwarranted, for any man to interfere with 
the conscientious determination of any other with regard 
to it. Nor can it be objected, with any effect, that this 
rule only applies when the determination of the Indi- 
vidual accords with, and is based upon, his own consci- 
entious conviction, for who shall determine whether it 
be so or not % Clearly no one but the Individual him- 
self. Any tribunal assuming to do it for him would be 
the Inquisition over again, which is the special abhor- 
rence of Protestantism. Such, then, is the Protestant 
faith. But what, let us inquire, is tlie Protestant 
practice I Precisely what it should be, in strict accord- 
ance with the fundamental axiom of Protestantism. 
Every variety of conscience, and every variety of de- 
portment in reference to this precise subject of love is 
already tolerated among us. At one extreme of the 
scale stand the Shakers, who abjure the connection of 
the sexes altogether. At the other extremity stands 
the association of Perfectionists, at Oneida, who hold 



32 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

and practice, and justify by the Scriptures, as a relig- 
ious dogma, what they denominate complex marriage, 
or the freedom of love. We have, in this State, 
stringent laws against adultery and fornication; but 
laws of that sort fall powerless, in America, before 
the all-pervading sentiment of Protestantism, which 
vindicates the freedom of conscience to all persons and 
in all things, provided the consequences fall upon the 
parties themselves. Hence the Oneida Perfectionists live 
undisturbed and respected, in the heart of the State of 
New York, and in the face of the world ; and the civil 
government, true to the Democratic principle, which is 
only the same principle in another application, is little 
anxious to interfere with this breach of its own ordi- 
nances, so long as they cast none of the consequences 
of their conduct upon those who do not consent to bear 
them. 

Such 5 then, is the unlimited sweep of the fundamental 
axiom of Protestantism. Such its unhesitating indorse- 
ments, both theoretically and practically, of the whole 
doctrine of the absolute Sovereignty of the Individual. 
It does not help the matter to assert, that it is an irre- 
ligious or a very immoral act to do this, or that, or the 
other thing. Protestantism neither asserts or denies 
that. It merely asserts that there is no power to de- 
termine that question, higher than the Individual him- 
self. It does not help the matter to affirm that the 
Scriptures/ or the law of God, delivered in any form, 
has determined the nature and limits of marriage. 
Protestantism, again, neither denies that proposition 
nor affirms it. It merely affirms, again, that the Indi- 
vidual himself must decide for himself what the law 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 33 

of God is, and that there is no authority higher than 
himself to whose decision he can be required to submit. 
It is arrogance, self-righteousness, and spiritual despot- 
ism for me to assume that you have not a conscience 
as well as I, and that if you regulate your own conduct 
in the light of that conscience, it will not be as well 
regulated in the sight of God as it would be if I were 
to impose the decisions of my conscience upon you. 

In general, however, Government still interferes with 
the marriage and parental relations. Democracy in 
America has always proceeded with due deference to 
the prudential motto, festina lente. In France, at the 
time of the first Revolution, Democracy rushed with the 
explosive force of escapement from centuries of com- 
pression, point blank to the bull's eye of its final des- 
tiny, from which it recoiled with such force that the 
stupid world has dreamed, for half a century, that the 
vital principle of Democracy was dead. As a logical 
sequence from Democratic principle, the legal obligation 
of marriage was sundered, and the Sovereignty of the 
Individual above the institution was vindicated. That 
the principle of Democracy is, potentially, still the 
same, will appear upon slight examination. Democracy 
denies all power to Government in matters of religion. 
No Democratic Government does, therefore, or can, 
base its interference with marriage upon the religious 
ground. It defines marriage to be, and regards it as 
being, a mere civil contract. It justifies its own inter- 
ference with it upon the same ground that it justifies 
its interference with other contracts, namely, to enforce 
the civil obligations connected with it, and to insure the 
maintenance of children. But here, as in the case of 



34 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

ordinary obligations, if the conviction obtains, that dif- 
ferent conditions of society will render the present re- 
lations of property between husband and wife, unneces- 
sary, and secure, by the equitable distribution and 
general abundance of wealth, a universal deference on 
the part of parents, to the dictates of nature in behalf 
of children, Democracy will cease to make this subject 
an exception to her dominant principles. A tendency 
to change these conditions is already shown in the pas- 
sage of laws to secure to the wife an independent or 
individual enjoyment of property. Already the observ- 
ation is made, too, that children are never abandoned 
among the wealthy classes, and hence the natural in- 
ference that the scientific production, the equitable dis- 
tribution, and the economical employment of wealth 
would render human laws unnecessary to enforce the 
first mandate of nature, hospitality and kindness toward 
offspring. The doctrine is already considerably diffused, 
that the union of the sexes would be, not only more 
pure, but more permanent, in the absence, under fa- 
vorable circumstances, of all legal interference. But 
whether that be so or not, is not now the question. I 
am merely asserting that the inevitable tendency of 
Democracy, like that of Protestantism, is toward aban- 
doning this subject to the sovereign determination of 
the Individual, and that Democracy in this country will 
attain, only more leisurely, the same point to which it 
went at a single leap, and from which it rebounded, in 
France. 

It is far less obvious, judging from the practical ex- 
hibition which it has hitherto made of itself, that the 
essential principle of Socialism is, equally with that of 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 35 

Protestantism and Democracy, the Individual Sover- 
eignty. Indeed, Socialism has been attacked and re- 
sisted more vigorously than from any other cause, in 
consequence of an instinctive perception that the meas- 
ures hitherto proposed by it sap the freedom of the In- 
dividual. The connected interests and complicated 
Artificial organization proposed by Fourier, and the re- 
nunciation of independent ownership contemplated by 
Communism, have been severely criticised and denounc- 
ed, and, the most so, perhaps, by those who are the most 
thoroughly imbued with the Protestant and Democratic 
idea of Individuality. To understand this apparent 
discrepancy we must distinguish the leading idea of 
Socialism from the methods proposed by its advocates. 
The two are quite distinct from each other, and it may 
*6e that Socialism has mistaken its measures, as every 
human enterprise is liable to do. 

Socialism demands the proper, legitimate, and just 
reward of labor. It demands that the interests of all 
shall be so arranged that they shall co-operate, instead 
of clashing with and counteracting each other. It de- 
mands economy in the production and uses of wealth, 
and the consequent abolition of w r retchedness and pov- 
erty. To what end does it make these demands'? 
Clearly it is in order that every human being shall be 
in the full possession, control, and enjoyment of his 
own person and modes of seeking happiness, with- 
out foreign interference from any quarter whatsoever. 
This, then, is the spirit of Socialism, and it is neither 
more nor less than a still broader and more compre- 
hensive assertion of the doctrine of the inherent Sov- 
ereignty of the Individual. The Socialist proposes 



36 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

association and combined interests merely as a means 
of securing that which he aims at — justice, co-opera- 
tion, and the economies of the large scale. Hence it 
follows that the Democrat resists and the Socialist ad- 
vocates Association and Communism for precisely the 
same reason. It is because both want identically the 
same thing. The Democrat sees in connected inter- 
ests a fatal stroke at his personal liberty — the unlim- 
ited sovereignty over his own conduct — and dreads the 
subjection of himself to domestic legislation, manifold 
committees, and continual and authorized espionage 
and criticism. The Socialist sees, in these same ar- 
rangements, abundance of wealth, fairly distributed 
among all, and a thousand beneficent results which he 
knows to be essential conditions to the possession or exer- 
cise of that very Sovereignty of the Individual. Each has 
arrived at one half the truth. The Socialist is right in as- 
serting that all the conditions which he demands are abso- 
lutely essential to the development of the individual self- 
hood. He is wrong in proposing such a fatal surrender 
of Individual liberty for their attainment as every form 
of amalgamated interests inevitably involves. The 
Democrat is negatively wrong in omitting from his pro- 
gramme the absolute necessity for harmonic social re- 
lations — wrong in supposing that there can always be 
a safe and legitimate exercise of those rights which he 
declares to be inalienable, short of those superior do- 
mestic arrangements which the Socialist demands. It 
is futile, for example, to talk of removing the restraints 
of law from marriage, thus guaranteeing freedom in 
" the pursuit of happiness" in that relation, before the 
just reward of labor and the consequent prevalence of 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 37 

general wealth shall have created a positive security of 
condition for women and children. Hence the blunder 
of Democracy in the old French Revolution, and hence 
the absolute dependence of Democracy, for the working 
out of its own principles, upon the happy solution of 
all the problems of Socialism. Hence, again, the nat- 
ural affinity of Democracy and Socialism, and the rea- 
son why, despite of their mutual misunderstanding, 
they have recently fallen into each other's embrace, in 
France, resounding in the ears of terrified Europe the 
ominous cry, Vive la Republique De?nocratique et 
Social. 

The blunder of Socialism is not in its end, but in its 
means. It consists in propounding a combination of 
interests which is opposed by the individualities of all 
nature, which is consequently a restriction of liberty, 
and which is, therefore, especially antagonistic to the 
very objects which Socialism proposes to attain. It is 
this which prevents the harmony of Democracy and So- 
cialism, even in France, from becoming complete, and 
which renders inevitable the disruption of every at- 
tempted social organization which does not end disas- 
trously in despotism — the inverse mode in which nature 
vindicates her irresistible determination toward Indi- 
viduality. Let that feature of the Socialist movement 
be retrenched, and a method of securing its great ends 
discovered which shall not be self-defeating in its ope- 
ration, and from that point Socialism and Democracy 
will blend into one, and, uniting with Protestantism, 
lose their distinctive appellations in the generic term 
of Individual Sovereignty. 

Such a principle is already discovered. It is capa- 
4 



38 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

ble of satisfactory demonstration that out of the adop- 
tion of a simple change in the commercial system of 
the world, by which cost and not value shall be recog- 
nized as the limit of price , will grow, legitimately, all 
the wealth-producing, equitable, co-operating, and har- 
monizing results which Socialism has hitherto sought 
to realize through the combination or amalgamation of 
interests, while, at the same time, it will leave, intact, 
the individualities of existing society, and even promote 
them to an extent not hitherto conceived of. It is not 
now, however, the appropriate time to trace out the re- 
sults of such a principle. We are concerned at pres- 
ent with Individuality and the spirit of the age as 
connected with governmental affairs.* 

It is already the axiom of Democracy, that that is 
the best government which governs least — that, in other 
words, which leaves the largest domain to the Individual 
sovereign. It may sound strange, and yet it is rigidly 
true, that nothing is more foreign to the essential na- 
ture of Democracy than the rule of majorities. De- 
mocracy asserts that all men are born free and equal, 
that is, that every individual is of right free from the 
governing control of every other and of all others. 
Democracy asserts, also, that this right is inalienable 
— that it can neither be surrendered nor forfeited to 
another Individual, nor to a majority of other Individ- 
uals. But the practical application of this principle 
has been, and will always be found to be, incompatible 
with our existing social order. It presupposes, as I 

* No. II. of this series of publications -will be an exposition of 
the basis principle of Equitable Commerce, namely, that Cost is 
the scientific limit of Price. 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 39 

have said, the preliminary attainment of the conditions 
demanded by Socialism. The rule of majorities is, 
therefore, a compromise enforced by temporary expe- 
diency — a sort of half-way station-house between Des- 
potism, which is Individuality in the concrete, and the 
Sovereignty of every Individual, which is Individuality 
in the discrete form. 

Genuine Democracy is identical with the no-govern- 
ment doctrine. The motto to which I have alluded 
looks directly to that end. Finding obstacles in the 
present social organization to the realization of its the- 
ory, Democracy has called a halt for the present, and 
consented to a truce. The no-government men of our 
day are practically not so wise, while they are theoret- 
ically more consistent. They are, in fact, the genuine 
Democrats. It is they who are fairly entitled to the 
soubriquet of " The unterrified Democracy." They 
fearlessly face all consequences, and push their doc- 
trine quite out to its logical conclusions. In so doing, 
they repeat the blunder which was committed in France. 
They insist upon no government higher than that of the 
Individual, while they leave in existence those causes 
which imperatively demand, and will always demand so 
long as they exist, the intervention of just such restrict- 
ive governments as we now have. 

It results from all that has been said, tnat the essen- 
tial principle of Protestantism, of Democracy, and of 
Socialism, is one and the same; that it is identical 
with what is called the spirit of the present age ; and 
that all of them are summed up in the idea of the ab- 
solute supremacy of the Individual above all human 
institutions. 



40 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

What, then, the question returns, is to be the up- 
shot of this movement 1 If every department of mod- 
ern reform is imbued with one and the same animating 
principle — if there be already an obvious convergence, 
and, prospectively, an inevitable conjunction and co- 
operation of the three great modern revolutionary 
forces, Protestantism, Democracy, and Socialism — if, 
even now, in their disjointed and semi-antagonistic re- 
lations, they prove more than a match for hoary con- 
servatism — if, in addition, material inventions and re- 
forms of all sorts concur in the same direction — if, in 
fine, the spirit of the age, or, more properly, of modern 
times, and which we recognize also as the spirit of hu- 
man improvement, tends continually and with accel- 
erated velocity toward the absolute Individualization 
of human affairs, what is the inevitable goal to be 
ultimately reached? I have said that in religious 
affairs the end must be that every man shall be his 
own sect. This is the simple meaning of Protestant- 
ism, interpreted in the light of its own principles. If 
the occasion were appropriate, it would be a glorious 
contemplation to dwell upon that more perfect harmony 
which will then reign among mankind in the religious 
sphere — a unity growing out of infinite diversity, and 
universal deference for the slightest Individualities of 
opinion in others, transcending in glory that hitherto 
sought by the Church in artificial organizations and 
arbitrary creeds, as far as the new heavens and the 
new earth will excel the old. 

Socialism demands, and will end by achieving, the 
untrammeled selfhood of the Individual in the private 
relations of life, but out of that universal selfhood 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 41 

shall grow the highest harmonies of social relationship. 
It is not these subjects, however, that are now specially 
appropriate. Let us restrict our specific inquiry to the 
remaining one of the three spheres of human affairs, 
which we have in the general view considered con- 
jointly, namely, that which relates to human govern- 
ment. 

Is it within the bounds of possibility, and, if so, is 
it within the limits of rational anticipation, that all 
human governments, in the sense in which government 
is now spoken of, shall pass away, and be reckoned 
among the useless lumber of an experimental age — 
that forcible government of all sorts shall, at some fu- 
ture day, perhaps not far distant, be looked back upon 
by the whole world, as we in America now look back 
upon the maintenance of a religious establishment, 
supposed in other times, and in many countries still, 
to be essential to the existence of religion among men ; 
and as we look back upon the ten thousand other im- 
pertinent interferences of government, as government 
is practiced in those countries where it is an institution 
of far more validity and consistency than it has among 
us % Is it possible, and, if so, is it rationally probable, 
that the time shall ever come when every man shall be, 
in fine, his own nation as well as his own sect 1 Will 
this tendency to universal enfranchisement — indications 
of which present themselves, as we have seen, in ex- 
uberant abundance on all hands in this age — ultimate 
itself, by placing the Individual above all political in- 
stitutions — the man above all subordination to munici- 
pal law 1 

To put ourselves in a condition to answer this inquiry 
4* 



42 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

with some satisfactory degree of certainty, we must 
first obtain a clear conception of the necessities out of 
which government grows ; then of the functions which 
government performs ; then of the specific tendencies 
of society in relation to those functions ; and, finally, 
of the legitimate successorship for the existing govern- 
mental institutions of mankind. 

I must apologize as well for the incompleteness as for 
the apparent dogmatism of any brief exposition of this 
subject. I assert that it is not only possible and ra- 
tionally probable, but that it is rigidly consequential 
upon the right understanding of the constitution of man, 
that all government, in the sense of involuntary re- 
straint upon the Individual, or substantially all, must 
finally cease, and along with it the whole complicated 
paraphernalia and trumpery of Kings, Emperors, Presi- 
dents, Legislatures, and Judiciary. I assert that the 
indicia of this result abound in existing society, and 
that it is the instinctive or intelligent perception of 
that fact by those who have not bargained for so much, 
which gives origin and vital energy to the reaction in 
Church and State and social life.' I assert that the 
distance is less to-day forward from the theory and 
practice of Government as it is in these United States, 
to the total abrogation of all Government above that of 
the Individual, than it is backward to the theory and 
practice of Government as Government now is in the 
despotic countries of the old world. 

The reason why apology is demanded is this : So 
radical a change in governmental affairs involves the 
concurrence of other equally radical changes in social 
habits, commerce, finance, and elsewhere. I have 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 43 

shown already, I think, that Democracy would have 
ended in that, had it not been obstructed by the want 
of certain conditions which nothing but the solution of 
the problems of Socialism can afford. To discuss the 
changes which must occur in every department of life, 
in order to render this revolution in Government prac- 
ticable, and to prove that those changes now exist in 
embryo, would be to embrace the whole field of human 
concerns. That is clearly impossible in the compass 
of a lecture. But it is equally impossible to adjust the 
radical changes which I foretell in Government, to the 
notion of the permanency of all other institutions in 
their present forms. What, then, can be done in this 
dilemma 1 I am reduced to a method of treating the 
subject which demands apology, both for incomplete- 
ness and apparent dogmatism. I perceive no possible 
method open to me but that of segregating the subject 
of Government from its connection with other depart- 
ments of life, and deducing from principles and rational 
grounds of conjecture, the changes which it is destined 
to undergo ; and when those changes involve the neces- 
sity of other and corresponding changes elsewhere, to 
assert, as it were, dogmatically, without stopping to 
adduce the proofs, that these latter changes are also 
existing in embryo, or actually progressing. 

I return now to the necessities out of which Govern- 
ment grows. These are in the broadest generalization. 
1. To restrain encroachments, and, 2, To manage the 
combined interests of mankind. 

First, with regard to restraining encroachments, and 
enforcing equity. Is there no better method of accom- 
plishing this end than force, such as existing Govern- 



44 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

ments are organized to apply 1 I affirm that there is. 
I affirm that a clear scientific perception of the point 
at which encroachment begins, in all our manifold pe- 
cuniary and moral relations with each other, an exact 
idea of the requirements of equity, accepted into the 
public mind, and felt to be capable of a precise appli- 
cation in action, would go tenfold further than arbitrary 
laws and the sanctions of laws can go, in obtaining the 
desired results. In saying this, I mean something 
definite and specific. I have already adverted to the 
discovery of an exact, scientific principle, capable of 
regulating the distribution of wealth, and introducing 
universal equity in pecuniary transactions — an exact 
mathematical guage of honesty — which, when it shall 
have imbued the public mind, and formed the public 
sentiment, and come to regulate the public conduct, 
will secure the products of labor with impartial justice 
to all, and tend to remove alike the temptations and 
the provocations to crime. What that principle does 
in the sphere of commerce, is done in the social and 
ethical spheres by the doctrine of the Sovereignty of 
the Individual. Both give to each his own, for it must 
be continually remembered that the doctrine of the 
Sovereignty of the Individual demands that I should 
sedulously and religiously respect your Individuality, 
while I vindicate my own. These two ground princi- 
ples, with a few others incident thereto, once accepted 
and indwelling in the minds of men, and controlling 
their action, will dispense with force and forcible Gov- 
ernment. The change which I contemplate in govern- 
mental affairs rests, therefore, upon these prior or con- 
current changes in the commercial, ethical, and social 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 45 

spheres. Statesmen and jurists have hitherto dealt 
with effects instead of causes. They have looked upon 
crime and encroachment of all sorts as a fact to be 
remedied, but never as a phenomenon to be accounted 
for. They have never gone back to inquire what con- 
ditions of existence manufactured the criminal, or pro- 
voked or induced the encroachment. A change in this 
respect is beginning to be observed, for the first time, 
in the present generation. The superiority of preven- 
tion over cure is barely beginning to be admitted, a 
reform in the methods of thought, which is an incipient 
stage of the revolution in question. The highest type 
of human society in the existing social order is found 
in the parlor. In the elegant and refined reunions of 
the aristocratic classes there is none ci the impertinent 
interference of legislation. The Individuality of each 
is fully admitted. Intercourse, therefore, is perfectly 
free. Conversation is continuous, brilliant, and varied. 
Groups are formed according to attraction. They are 
continuously broken up, and re-formed through the 
operation of the same subtile and all-pervading influence. 
Mutual deference pervades all classes, and the most 
perfect harmony, ever yet attained, in complex human 
relations, prevails under precisely those circumstances 
which Legislators and Statesmen dread as the condi- 
tions of inevitable anarchy and confusion. If there are 
laws of etiquette at all, they are mere suggestions of 
principles admitted into and judged of for himself or 
herself, by each individual mind. 

Is it conceivable that in all the future progress of 
humanity, with all the innumerable elements of develop- 
ment which the present age is unfolding, society gener- 



46 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

ally, and in all its relations, will not attain as high a 
grade of perfection as certain portions of society, in 
certain special relations, have already attained 1 

Suppose the intercourse of the parlor to be regulated 
by specific legislation. Let the time which each gen- 
tleman shall be allowed to speak to each lady be fixed 
by law ; the position in which they should sit or stand 
be precisely regulated ; the subjects which they shall 
be allowed to speak of, and the tone of voice and ac- 
companying gestures with which each may be treated, 
carefully defined, all under pretext of preventing dis- 
order and encroachment upon each other's privileges 
and rights, and can any thing be conceived better cal- 
culated or more certain to convert social intercourse 
into intolerable slavery and hopeless confusion 1 

It is precisely in this manner that municipal legisla- 
tion interferes with and prevents the natural organiza- 
tion of society. Mankind legislate themselves into 
confusion by their effort to escape it. Still, a state of 
society may perhaps be conceived, so low in social de- 
velopment that even the intercourse of the parlor could 
not be prudently indulged, without a rigid code of 
deportment, and the presence of half a dozen bailiffs to 
preserve order. I will not deny, therefore, that Gov- 
ernment in municipal affairs is, in like manner, a tem- 
porary necessity of undeveloped society. What I affirm 
is, that along with, and precisely in proportion to, the 
social advancement of a people, that necessity ceases, 
so far as concerns the first of the causes of Government 
referred to — the necessity for restraining encroachments. 

The second demand for Government is to manage 
the combined interests of society. But combined or 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 47 

amalgamated interests of all sorts are opposed to Indi- 
viduality. The Individuality of interests should be as 
absolute as that of persons. Hence the number and 
extent of combined interests will be reduced with every 
step in the genuine progress of mankind. The cost 
principle will furnish in its operation the means of con- 
ducting the largest human enterprises, under Individual 
guidance and control. It strips capital of its iniquitous 
privilege of oppressing labor by earning an income of 
its own, in the form of interest, and places it freely at 
the disposal of those who will preserve and administer 
it best, upon the sole condition of returning it unim- 
paired, but without augmentation, at the appropriate 
time, to its legitimate owners. 

A glance at the functions which Government actually 
performs, and the specific tendencies which society now 
exhibits in relation to those functions, will confirm the 
statement that all, or most of the combined interests 
of society will be finally disintegrated and committed 
to individual hands. It is one of the acknowledged 
functions of Government until now, to regulate com- 
merce. But, as we have already seen, the spirit of the 
age demands that Government shall let commerce alone. 
In this country, an important Bureau of the Executive 
Department of Government is the Land Office. But 
the public domain is, we have seen, already demanded 
by the people, and the Land Office will have to be dis- 
pensed with. The Army and Navy refer to a state of 
international relations of which every thing begins to 
prognosticate the final extinction. ■ The universal ex- 
tension of commerce and intercommunication, by means 
of steam navigation, railroads, and the magnetic tele- 



48 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

graph, together with the general progress of enlighten- 
ment, are rapidly obliterating natural boundaries, and 
blending the human family into one. The cessation of 
war is becoming a familiar idea, and with the cessation of 
war, armies and navies will cease of course to be required. 
It is probable that even the existing languages of the earth 
will melt, within another century or two, into one com- 
mon and universal tongue, from the same causes, oper- 
ating upon a more extended scale, as those which have 
blended the dialects of the different counties of Eng- 
land, of the different departments of France, and of the 
kingdoms of Spain into the English, the French, and 
the Spanish languages respectively. We have premo- 
nitions of the final disbanding of the armies and navies 
of the world in the substitution of a citizen militia, in 
the growing unpopularity of even that ridiculous shadow 
of an army, the militia itself, and in the substitution 
of the merchant steamship with merely an incidental 
warlike equipment instead of the regular man-of-war. 
The Navy and War Departments of Government will 
thus be dispensed with. The State Department now 
takes charge of the intercourse of the nation with for- 
eign nations. But with the cessation of war there will 
be no foreign nations, and consequently the State or 
Foreign Department may in turn take itself away. 
Patriotism will expand into philanthropy. Nations 
like sects will dissolve into the individuals who com- 
pose them. Every man will be his own nation, and 
preserving his own sovereignty, and respecting the sov- 
ereignty of others, he will be a nation at peace with 
all others. The term, " a man of the world," reveals 
the fact that it is the cosmopolite in manners and sen- 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 49 

timents 'whom the world already recognizes as the true 
gentleman — the type and leader of civilization. The 
Home Department of Government is a common recep- 
tacle of odds and ends, every one of whose functions 
would be better managed by Individual enterprise, and 
might take itself away with advantage any day. The 
Treasury Department is merely a kind of secretory 
gland, to provide the means of carrying on the ma- 
chinery of the other Departments. When they are 
removed, it will of course have no apology left for con- 
tinuing to exist. Finances for administering Govern- 
ment will no longer be Wanted when there is no longer 
any Government to administer. The Judiciary is, in 
fact, a branch of the Executive, and falls of course, 
as we have seen, with the introduction of principles 
which will put an end to aggression and crime. The 
Legislature enacts what the Executive and Judiciary 
execute. If the execution itself is unnecessary, the 
enactment of course is no less so. Thus piece by 
piece, we dispose of the whole complicated fabric of 
Government, which lo6ms up in such gloomy grandeur, 
overshadowing the freedom of the Individual, impress- 
ing the minds of men with a false conviction of its ne- 
cessity, as if it were, like the blessed light of day, in- 
dispensable to life and happiness. 

There is abundant evidence to the man of reflection, 
that what we have thus performed in imagination is 
destined to be rapidly accomplished in fact. There is, 
perhaps, no one consideration which looks more directly 
to that consummation, than the growing unpopularity 
of politics, in every phase of the subject. In America 
this fact is probably more obvious than any where 
5 



50 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

else. The pursuit of politics is almost entirely aban- 
doned to lawyers, and generally it is the career of those 
who are least successful in that profession. The gen- 
eral repugnance of the masses of mankind for that class 
of the community, by which they testify an instinctive 
appreciation of the outrage upon humanity committed 
by the attempt to reduce the impertinent interference 
of legislation to a science, and to practice it as a learned 
profession, is intensified, in the case of the politician, 
by the element of contempt. In the sham Democracies, 
wherein majorities govern, the condition of the office- 
seeker and of the office-holder is alike and peculiarly 
unfortunate. Defeated, he is consigned unceremoni- 
ously, by popular opinion, to the category of the " poor 
devil." Successful, he is denounced as a political hack. 
His position is pre-eminently precarious. Whatever 
veneration attaches still to the manufacturers and exec- 
utors of law among us is mostly traditionary. So much 
of the popular estimation of the men whose business 
is governing their fellow-men, as is the indigenous 
growth of our institutions, is essentially disrespectful. 
The politician, in a republic, is a man whose businesa 
it is to please every body, and who, consequently, haa 
no personality of his own, and this, here and now, in a 
country and age in which distinctive personality is 
becoming the type and model of society. It is regarded 
to-day as a misfortune, in the families of respectable 
tradespeople, if a son of any promise has an unlucky 
turn for political preferment. Those who execute the 
laws are in little better plight than those who make 
them. Recently, throughout most of the States, when 
changes have been made in the fundamental law, the 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 51 

tenure of office of judges of all ranks has been reduced 
to a short period of from two to four years, and the 
office rendered elective. Such is the fearful descent 
upon which the dignity of powdered wigs is fairly 
launched in Republican America, Judges, Chancellors, 
and Chief Justices entering the canvass, at short inter- 
vals, for returns to the Bench, and shaking hands with 
greasy citizens as the price of judicial authority. It is 
said that familiarity breeds contempt, or that no man 
is great to his valet-de-chambre. When the inhabitants 
of a heathen country begin to treat their priests and 
their wooden divinities with contemptuous familiarity, 
wise men see that the power of Paganism is broken, 
and the Medicine-man, the Fetish, or the Juggernaut 
must soon give place to some more rational conception 
of the religious idea. At the ratio of depreciation act- 
ually progressing, office-holding of all sorts, in these 
United States, from the president down to the constable, 
will, in a few years more, be ranked in the public mind 
as positively disreputable. In the higher condition of 
society, toward which mankind is unconsciously advanc- 
ing, men will shun all responsibility for, and arbitrary 
control over the conduct of others, as sedulously as 
during past ages they have sought them as the chief 
good. Washington declined to be made king, and the 
whole world has not ceased to make the welkin ring 
with laudations of the disinterested act. The time 
will come yet, when the declinature, on all hands, of 
every species of governmental authority over others, 
will not even be deemed a virtue, but simply the plain 
dictate of enlightened self-interest. The sentiment of 
the poet will then be recognized as an axiom of philosophy, 



52 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

" Whoever mounts the throne — King, Priest, or Prophet — 
Man alike shall groan." 

Carlyle complains, in the bitterness of his heart, that 
the true kings and governors of mankind have retired 
in disgust from the task of governing the world, and 
betaken themselves to the altogether private business 
of governing themselves. Whenever the world at large 
shall become as wise as they, when all men shall be 
content to govern themselves merely, then, and not till 
then, will " The True Constitution of Government" be- 
gin to be installed. Carlyle has but discovered the fact 
that good men are withdrawing from politics, without 
penetrating the rationale of the phenomenon. He may 
call upon them in vain till he is hoarse, to return to 
the arena of a contest which has been waged for some 
six thousand years or so, with continuous defeat, at a 
time when they are beginning to discover that the whole 
series of bloody conflicts has been fought with windmills 
instead of giants, and that what the world wants, in 
the way of government, is letting alone. 

But what then? Have we arrived at the upshot of 
the whole matter when we have, in imagination, swept 
all the actual forms of Government out of existence 1 
Is human society, in its mature and normal condition, 
to be a mere aggregation of men and women, standing 
upon the unrelieved dead level of universal equality? Is 
there to be no homage, no rank, no honors, no transcend- 
ent influence, no power, in fine, exerted by any one man 
over his fellow-men ? Will there be nothing substan- 
tially corresponding to, and specifically substituted for, 
what is now known among men as Human Government ? 

This is the question to which we are finally conducted 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 53 

by the current of our investigations, and to this question 
I conceive the answer to be properly affirmative. Had 
I not believed so, there would have been no propriety 
in the title, " The True Constitution of Government," 
under which I announced this discourse. It might be 
thought by some a sufficient answer to the question, 
that principles, and not men, will then constitute the 
Government of mankind. So vague a statement, how- 
ever, does not give complete satisfaction to the inquisi- 
tive mind, nor does it meet the interrogatory in all its 
varying forms. We wish to know what will be the 
positions, relatively to each other, into which men will 
be naturally thrown by the operation of that perfect 
liberty which will result from the prevalence and toler- 
ation of universal Individuality. We desire to know 
this especially, now, with reference to that class of the 
mutual relations of men which will correspond most 
exactly to the relations of the governors and the gov- 
erned. 

Negatively, it is certain that in such a state of so- 
ciety as that which we are now contemplating, no in- 
fluence will be tolerated, in the place of Government, 
which is maintained or exerted by force in any, even the 
subtlest, forms of involuntary compulsion. But there 
is still a sense in which men are said to exert power — a 
sense in which the wills of the governor and the gov- 
erned concur, and blend, and harmonize with each 
other. It is in such a sense as this, that the great or- 
ator is said to control the minds of his auditory, or that 
some matchless queen of song sways an irresistible in- 
fluence over the hearts of men. When mankind grad- 
uate out of the period of brute force, that man will be 
5* 



54 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

the greatest hero and conqueror who levies the heaviest 
tribute of homage by excellence of achievement in any 
department of human performance. The avenues to 
distinction will not be then, as now, open only to the 
few. Each individual will truly govern the minds, and 
hearts, and conduct of others. Those who have the 
most power to impress themselves upon the community 
in which they live, will govern in larger, and those who 
have less will govern in smaller spheres. All will be 
priests and kings, serving at the innumerable altars 
and sitting upon the thrones of that manifold hierarchy, 
the foundations of which God himself has laid in the 
constitution of man. Genius, talent, industry, discov- 
ery, the power to please, every development of Indi- 
viduality, in fine, which meets the approbation of an- 
other, will be freely recognized as the divine anointing 
which constitutes him a sovereign over others — a sov- 
ereign having sovereigns for his subjects — subjects 
whose loyalty is proved and known, because they are 
ever free to transfer their fealty to other lords. With 
the growing development of Individuality even in this 
age, new spheres of honorable distinction are continu- 
ally evolved. The accredited heroes of our times are 
neither politicians or warriors. It is the discoverers 
of great principles, the projectors of beneficent designs, 
and the executors of magnificent undertakings of all 
sorts who, even now, command the homage of mankind. 
"While politics are falling into desuetude and contempt, 
while war, from being the admiration of the world is 
rapidly becoming its abhorrence, the artist and the art- 
isan are rising into relative importance and estimation. 
Even the undistinguished workers, as they have hith- 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 55 

erto been, shall hereafter hold seats as Cabinet Minis- 
ters in the new hierarchical government, which shall 
shadow, in those days, with its overspreading magnifi- 
cence, the dwellings of regenerated humanity. In that 
stupendous administration, extending from the greatest 
down to the least things of human concernment, there 
shall be no lack of functionaries and no limit upon pat- 
ronage. Of that social state, which opens the avenues 
of all honorable pursuits to all, upon terms of equity 
and mutual co-operation, it may be truly said, as was 
said by the Great Teacher, when speaking of another 
kingdom — if indeed it be another — "In my Father's 
house there are many mansions." The laudable am- 
bition of all will then be fully gratified. There will 
be no defeated candidates in the political campaigns of 
that day. Where the interests of all are identical, 
even the superiority of another is success, and the 
glory of another is a personal triumph. 

A superficial observer might judge that there was 
more prosperity and power in a petty principality of 
Germany than there is in the United States of Ameri- 
ca, because he sees more pomp and magnificence sur- 
rounding the court of a puppet prince, whom men call 
the ruler of that people. No one but an equally su- 
perficial observer, will mistake the phantom, called 
Government, which resides in the Halls and Depart- 
ments at Washington — the mere ghost of what such a 
Government once was, in its palmy days of despotism — 
for a nearer approximation to the true organization of 
Government, than that natural arrangement of society 
which divides and distributes the functions of governing 
into ten thousand Departments and Bureaus at the 



56 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

homes, in the workshops, and at the universities of the 
people. 

If that trumpery Government be called such, be- 
cause it performs important public functions, then have 
■we distinguished private individuals among us who are 
already pre-eminently more truly Governors than they. 
If the concern at Washington is legitimately denomin- 
ated a Government of the people, because it controls and 
regulates a Post Office Department, for example, then are 
the Harndens and Adamses Governors too, for they con- 
trol and regulate a Package Express Department, which 
is a greater and more difficult thing. They carry bigger 
bundles, and carry them farther, and deliver them with 
more regularity and dispatch. It is stated, upon autho- 
rity which I presume to be reliable, that Adams & Co.'s 
Express is the most extensive organization of any sort 
in the world — that it is, in fact, absolutely world-wide ; 
and yet it is strictly an individual concern. As an in- 
stance of the superiority of administration in the pri- 
vate enterprise over the national combination, I was 
myself at Washington during the last winter, when the 
mails were interrupted by the breaking up of a railroad 
bridge between Baltimore and Philadelphia, and when, 
for nearly two weeks, the newspapers of the Commercial 
Metropolis were regularly delayed, one whole day, on 
their way to the Political Metropolis of the country, while 
the same papers came regularly and promptly through 
every day by the private expresses. The President, 
Members of Congress, and Cabinet Ministers, even the 
Postmaster General himself, was regularly served with 
the news by the enterprise of a private individual, who 
performed one of the functions of the Government, in op- 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 57 

position to the Government, and better than the Govern- 
ment, levying tribute upon the very functionary of the 
Government who was elected, consecrated, and anointed 
for the performance of that identical function. Who, 
then, was the true Governor and Cabinet Minister, the 
Postmaster General, who was daily dispatching messen- 
gers to rectify the irregularity, and issuing bulletins to 
explain and apologize for it, or the Adams Express 
man, who conquered the difficulty, and served the pub- 
lic, when the so-called Government failed to do it? 
The fault is, that the Government goes by rule, pre- 
ordained in the form of law, and consequently has no 
capacity for adapting itself to the Individuality of an 
unforeseen contingency. It has not the Individual de- 
ciding power and promptitude of action which are ab- 
solutely necessary for such occasions. 

It is the actual performance of the function which is 
all that there is good in the idea of Government. All 
that there is besides that, is mere restriction, and con- 
sequent annoyance and oppression of the public, as 
when our Government undertook to suppress those pri- 
vate expresses, which serve the public better than 
it. The point, then, is this : I affirm that every use- 
ful function, or nearly every one which is now perform- 
ed by Government, and the use of which will remain 
in the more advanced conditions of mankind, toward 
which the present tendencies of society converge, can 
be better performed by the Individual, self-elected and 
self-authorized, than by any constituted Government 
whatsoever ; and further, since it is the performance of 
the function, and the influence which the performance 
of the function exerts over the conduct, and to the ad- 



58 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

vantage of men, which makes the true Governor, it 
follows, I affirm, that the Adams Express man was, in 
the case I have mentioned, the true Governor, and that 
the Postmaster General, and the whole innumerable 
gang of Legislators and Executors of the law at his 
back, were the sham Governors, such as the world is 
getting ready to discharge on perpetual furlough. 

It is possible that there may be a few comparatively 
unimportant interests of mankind which are so essen- 
tially combined in their nature that some species of 
artificial organization will always be necessary for their 
management. I do not, for example, see how the pub- 
lic highways can be properly laid out, and administered 
by the private individual. Let us resort, then, to sci- 
ence for the solution of this anomaly, for every subject 
has its science, the true social relations of mankind as 
well as all others. The inexorable natural law which 
governs this subject is this : that nature demands every- 
where an individual lead. Every combined interest 
must therefore come ultimately to be governed by an 
individual mind, to be intrusted, in other words, to a 
despotism. It is the recognition of this law which is 
embodied in the political axiom, that " power is con- 
stantly stealing from the hands of the many into the 
hands of the few." It is this scientific principle, lying 
down in the very nature of things, which constitutes 
both the rationale of monarchy and its appropriate 
apology. The lesson of wisdom to be deduced from 
this principle is not, however, as our political leaders 
have preached to us, that " the price of liberty is eter- 
nal vigilance" — a liberty which is not worth possession 
if it can not be enjoyed in security, and a vigilance 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 59 

which is only required to be exercised in order to defeat 
the legitimate operation of the most universal and fun- 
damental law of nature. The true lesson of political 
wisdom is simply this : that no interests should ever be 
intrusted to a combination, which are too important to 
be surrendered understandingly and voluntarily to the 
guidance of a despotism. Government, therefore, in 
the present sense of the term, can never, from the very 
essential nature of the case, be compatible with the 
safety of the liberties of the people, until the sphere 
of its authority is reduced to the very narrowest dimen- 
sions — never until the arbitrary institution of Govern- 
ment shall have shrunk into a mere commission — a 
board of overseers of roads and canals, and such other 
unimportant interests as experience shall prove, can 
not be so readily managed by irresponsible individual 
action. 

It is this latter alone which will then truly merit the 
imposing title of Government. There is a sense, as I 
have said, in which that term is fairly applicable to the 
natural organization of the interrelations of men. If 
Genin, or Leary, or Knox devises a new fashion for 
hats, and manufactures hats in the style so devised, 
and the style pleases you and me, and we buy the hats 
and wear them, therein is an example, an humble ex- 
ample, perhaps you will think, but still a genuine ex- 
ample of true Government. The individual hatter is 
self-elected to his function. I, in giving him the pref- 
erence over another, express my conviction of his fit- 
ness for that function, of his superiority over others. 
I vote for him. I give him my suffrage. I confirm his 
election. The abstract statement of the true order of 



60 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

Government, then, is this : it is that Government in 
which the riders elect themselves , and are voted for 
afterward. 

The uncouth and unscrupulous despot proclaims that 
he governs mankind in his own right — the right of the 
strongest. The modernized and somewhat civilized 
despot announces that he governs by divine right ; that 
he is the God-appointed ruler of the people, by virtue 
of the fact that he finds himself a ruler at all. The 
more modern Democratic Governor claims to rule by 
virtue of the will of a majority. The true Governor 
rules by virtue of all these authorizations combined. 
He rules in his own right, because he is self-elected, 
and exercises his function in accordance with his own 
choice. He rules by authorization of the majority, be- 
cause it is he who receives the suffrages of the largest 
number who governs most extensively, and, finally, he, 
of all men, can be appropriately said to rule by divine 
right. His own judgment of his own fitness for his 
function, confirmed by the approval of those whom he 
desires to govern, are the highest possible evidence of 
the divinity of his claim, of the fact, in other words, 
that he was created and designed by God himself for 
the most perfect performance of that particular func- 
tion. 

What, then, society has to do, is to remove the ob- 
structions to this universal self-election, by every Indi- 
vidual, of himself, to that function which his own con- 
sciousness of his own adaptation prompts him to believe 
to be his peculiar God-intended ofiice in life. Throw 
open the polls, make the pulpit, the school-room, the 
workshop, the manufactory, the shipyard, and the store- 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 61 

house the universal ballot-hoxes of the people. Make 
every day an election day, and every human being both 
a candidate and a voter, exercising each day and hour 
his full and unlimited franchise. 

In order to this consummation two conditions are in- 
dispensably necessary : the first is the cordial and uni- 
versal acceptance of this very principle of the absolute 
Sovereignty of the Individual — each claiming his own 
Sovereignty, and each religiously respecting that of all 
others. The second is the equitable interchange of the 
products, of labor, measured by the scientific law relat- 
ing to that subject to which I have referred, and the 
consequent security to each of the full enjoyment and 
unlimited control of just that portion of wealth which 
he or she produces, the effect of which will be the in- 
troduction of general comfort and security, the moder- 
ation of avarice, and the supply of a definite knowl- 
edge of the limits of rights and encroachments. 

The instrumentalities necessary for hastening the 
adoption of these principles are likewise, chiefly, two : 
these are, first, a more intense longing for true and 
harmonjc relations ; and, secondly, a clear intellectual 
conception of the principles themselves, and of the 
consequences which would flow from their adoption. 
The first is a highly religious aspiration, the second is 
a process of scientific induction. One is the soul and 
the other the sensible body, the spiritual substance, 
and the corporeal form of social harmony. The teach- 
ings of Christianity have inspired the one, the illumin- 
ation of science must provide .the other. Intellectual 
resources brought to the aid of Desire constitute the 



B 



62 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

marriage of Wisdom with Love, whose progeny is Hap- 
piness. 

When from the lips of truth one mighty breath 
Shall, like a whirlwind, scatter in its breeze 
The whole dark pile of human mockeries, 
Then shall the race of mind commence on earth, 
And, starting fresh, as from a second birth, 
Man, in the sunshine of the world's new spring, 
Shall walk transparent, like some holy thing. 

It would, perhaps, be injudicious to conclude this 
exhibit of the doctrine of the Individual Sovereignty, 
without a more formal statement of the scientific limit 
upon the exercise of that Sovereignty which the princi- 
ple itself supplies. If the principle were predicated 
of one Individual alone, the assertion of his Sovereignty, 
or, in other words, of his absolute right to do as he 
pleases, or to pursue his own happiness in his own way, 
would be confessedly to invest him with the attributes 
of despotism over others. But the doctrine which I 
have endeavored to set forth is not that. It is the 
assertion of the concurrent Sovereignty of all men, and 
of all women, and, within the limits I am about to 
state, of all children. This concurrence of Sovereignty 
necessarily and appropriately limits the Sovereignty of 
each. Each is Sovereign only within his own domin- 
ions, because he can not extend the exercise of his Sov- 
eignty beyond those limits without trenching upon, and 
interfering with, the prerogatives of others, whose Sov- 
ereignty the doctrine equally affirms. What, then, con- 
stitutes the boundaries of one's own dominions ? This 
is a pregnant question for the happiness of mankind, 
and one which has never, until now, been specifically 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 63 

and scientifically asked or answered. The answer, if 
correctly given, will fix the precise point at which 
Sovereignty ceases and encroachment begins ; and that 
knowledge, as I have said, accepted into the public 
mind, will do more than laws, and the sanctions of 
laws, to regulate individual conduct and intercourse. 
The limitation is this : every Individual is the rightful 
Sovereign over his own conduct in all things, whenever, 
and just so far as, the consequences of his conduct can 
be assumed by himself ; or, rather, inasmuch as no one 
objects to assuming agreeable consequences, whenever 
and as far as this is true of the disagreeable conse- 
quences. For disagreeable consequences, endurance, 
or burden of all sorts, the term " Cost" is elected as a 
scientific technicality. Hence the exact formula of the 
doctrine, with its inherent limitation, may be stated 
thus : " The Sovereignty of the Individual , to be exer- 
cised at his own cost." 

This limitation of the doctrine being inherent, and 
necessarily involved in the idea of the Sovereignty of 
all, may possibly be left with safety, after the limita- 
tion is understood, to implication, and the simple Sov- 
ereignty of the Individual be asserted as the inclusive 
formula. The limitation has never been distinctly and 
clearly set forth in the announcements which have been 
made either of the Protestant or the Democratic creed. 
Protestantism promulgates the one single, bald, unmod- 
ified proposition, that in all matters of conscience the 
Individual judgment is the sole tribunal, from which 
there is no appeal. As against this there is merely the 
implied right in others to resist when the conscience of 
the Individual leads him to attack or encroach upon 



64 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

them. It is the same with the Democratic prerogative 
of the "pursuit of happiness." The limitation has 
been felt rather than distinctly and scientifically pro- 
pounded. 

It results from this analysis, that wherever such cir- 
cumstances exist that a person can not exercise his own 
Individuality and Sovereignty without throwing the 
" cost," or burden, of his actions upon others, the 
principle has so far to be compromised. Such circum- 
stances arise out of connected or amalgamated interests, 
and the sole remedy is disconnection. The exercise of 
Sovereignty is the exercise of the deciding power. 
Whoever has to bear the cost should have the deciding 
power in every case. If one has to bear the cost of 
another's conduct, and just so far as he has to do so, 
he should have the deciding power over the conduct of 
the other. Hence dependence and close connections 
of interest demand continual concessions and compro- 
mises. Hence, too, close connection and mutual de- 
pendence is the legitimate and scientific root of Despot- 
ism, as disconnection or Individualization of interests is 
the root of freedom and emancipation. 

If the close combination, which demands the sur- 
render of our will to another, is one instituted by na- 
ture, as in the case of the mother and the infant, then 
the relation is a true one, notwithstanding. The sur- 
render is based upon the fact that the child is not yet 
strictly an Individual. The unfolding of its Individ- 
uality is gradual, and its growing development is pre- 
cisely marked, by the increase of its ability to assume 
the consequences of its own acts. If the close combi- 
nation of interests is artificial or forced, then the par- 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 65 

ties exist toward each other in false relations, and to 
false relations no true principle can apply. Conse- 
quently, in such relations, the Sovereignty of the Indi- 
vidual must be abandoned. The law of such relations 
is collision and conflict, to escape which, while remain- 
ing in the relations, there is no other means but 
mutual concessions and surrenders of the selfhood. 
Hence, inasmuch as the interests of mankind have 
never yet been scientifically individualized by the oper- 
ations of an equitable commerce, and the limits of en- 
croachment never scientifically defined, the axioms of 
morality, and even the provisions of positive legisla- 
tion, have been doubtless appropriate adaptations to 
the ages of false social relations to which they have 
been applied, as the cataplasm or the sinapism may be 
for disordered conditions of the human system. We 
must not, however, reason, in either case, from that 
temporary adaptation in a state of disease, to the healthy 
condition of society or the Individual. Much that is 
relatively good is only good as a necessity growing out 
of evil. The greater good is the removal of the evil 
altogether. The almshouse and the foundling hospital 
may be necessary and laudable charities, but they can 
only be regarded by the enlightened philanthropist as 
the stinking apothecary's salve, or the dead flies, applied 
to the bruises and sores of the body politic. Admit- 
ted temporary necessities, they are offensive to the nos- 
trils of good taste. The same reflection is applicable 
to every species of charity. The oppressed classes do 
not want charity but justice, and with simple justice 
the necessity for charity will disappear or be reduced to 
a minimum. So in the matter before us. The disposi- 



66 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

tion to forego one's own pleasures to secure the happiness 
of others is a positive virtue in all those close connec- 
tions of interest which render such a sacrifice necessary, 
and inasmuch as such have hitherto always been the cir- 
cumstances of the Individual in society, this abnegation 
of selfhood is the highest virtue which the world has 
hitherto conceived. But these close connections of in- 
terest are themselves wrong, for the very reason that they 
demand this sacrifice and surrender of what ought to 
be enjoyed and developed to the highest extent. The 
truest and the highest virtue, in the true relations of 
men, will be the fullest unfolding of all the Individual- 
ities of each, and the truest relations of men are those 
w T hich permit that unfolding of the Individualities of 
each, not only without collision or injury to any, but 
with mutual advantage to all — the reconciliation of the 
Individual and the interests of the Individual with so- 
ciety and the interests of society — that composite har- 
mony, or, if you will, unity, of the whole, which results 
from the discrete unity and distinctive Individuality of 
each particular monad in the complex natural organiza- 
tion of society. 

The doctrine of Individuality, and the Sovereignty 
of the Individual, involves, then, at this point, two of 
the most important scientific consequences, the one 
serving as a guiding principle to the true solution of 
existing evils in society, and to the exodus out of the pre- 
vailing confusion, and the other as a guiding principle 
of deportment in existing society, while those evils re- 
main. The first is, that the Sovereignty of the Indi- 
vidual, or, in other words absolute personal liberty, 
can only be enjoyed along with the entire disintegra- 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 67 

tion of combined or amalgamated interests ; and here 
the " cost principle" comes in to point out how that 
disintegration can and must take place, not as isolation, 
but along with, and absolutely productive of, the utmost 
conceivable harmony and co-operation. The second is, 
that while people are forced, by the existing conditions 
of society, to remain in the close connections resulting 
from amalgamated interests, there is no alternative but 
compromise and mutual concession, or an absolute sur- 
render upon one side or the other. The innate Indi- 
vidualities of persons are such that every calculation 
based upon the identity of tastes, or opinions, or beliefs, 
or judgments, of even so many as two persons, is abso- 
lutely certain to be defeated, and as Nature demands 
an Individuality of lead, one must necessarily surren- 
der to the other whenever the relation demands an 
identity of action. To quarrel with that necessity is a 
folly. To deny its existence is a delusion. To enter 
such combinations with the expectation that liberty and 
Individuality can be enjoyed in them, is a sore aggrava- 
tion of the evil. Mutual recrimination is added to the 
inevitable annoyance of mutual restriction. Hence a 
right understanding of the scientific conditions under 
which alone Individuality can be indulged, a clear and 
intelligent perception of the fact that the collisions and 
mutual contraventions of the combined relation result 
from nothing wrong in the associated Individuals, but 
from the wrong of the relation itself, goes far to intro- 
duce the spirit of mutual forbearance and toleration, 
and thus to soften the acrimony and alleviate the burden 
of the present imperfect and unscientific institutions of 
society. 



68 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

Hence, again, as self-sacrifice and denial to one's self 
of one's own abstract rights is an absolute necessity 
of the existing order of things, there is a mutual neces- 
sity that we claim that of each other, and, if need be, 
that we enforce the claim. Herein lies the apology for 
our existing Governments, and for force as a temporary 
necessity, and hence the doctrine of Individuality, and 
the Sovereignty of the Individual, while the most ultra- 
radical doctrine in theory and final purpose ever pro- 
mulgated in the world, is at the same time eminently con- 
servative in immediate practice. While it teaches, in 
principle, the prospective disruption of nearly every 
existing institution, it teaches concurrently, as matter 
of expediency, a patient and philosophical endurance 
of the evils around us, while we labor assiduously for 
their removal. So far from quarreling with existing 
Government, wiien it is put upon the footing of tempo- 
rary expediency, as distinguished from abstract princi- 
ple and final purpose, it sanctions and confirms it. It 
has no sympathies with aimless and fruitless struggles, 
the recrimination of different classes in society, nor 
with merely anarchical and destructive onslaughts upon 
existing institutions. It proposes no abrupt and sud- 
den shock to existing society. It points to a scientific, 
gradual, and perfectly peaceable substitution of new 
and harmonious relations for those which are confess- 
edly beset, to use the mildest expression, by the most 
distressing embarrassments. 

I will conclude by warning you against one other 
misconception, which is very liable to be entertained 
by those to whom Individuality is for the first time 
presented as the great remedy for the prevalent evils 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT 69 

of the social state. I mean the conception that Indi- 
viduality has something in common with isolation, or 
the severance of all personal relations with one's fellow- 
men. Those who entertain this idea will object to it, 
because they desire, as they will say, co-operation and 
brotherhood. That objection is conclusive proof that 
they have not rightly comprehended the nature of In- 
dividuality, or else they would have seen that it is 
through the Individualization of interests alone that har- 
monic co-operation and universal brotherhood can be 
attained. It is not the disruption of relationships, 
but the creation of distinct and independent personali- 
ties between whom relations can exist. The more dis- 
tinct the personalities, and the more cautiously they 
are guarded and preserved, the more intimate the rela- 
tions may be, without collision or disturbance. Persons 
may be completely individualized in their interests who 
are in the most immediate personal contact, as in the 
case of the lodgers at an hotel, or they may have com- 
bined or amalgamated interests, and be remote from 
each other, as in the case of partners residing in differ- 
ent countries. The players at shuttlecock co-operate 
in friendly competition with each other, while facing 
and opposing each other, each fully directing his own 
movements, which they could not do if their arms and 
legs were tied together, nor even if they stood side by 
side. The game of life is one which demands the 
same freedom of movement on the part of every player, 
and every attempt to procure harmonious co-operation 
by fastening different individuals in the same position, 
will defeat its own object. 

In opposing combinations or amalgamated interests, 



70 TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT. 

Individuality does not oppose, but favors and conducts 
toward co-operation. But, on the other hand, Individ- 
uality alone is not sufficient to insure co-operation. It 
is an essential element of co-operative harmony, but 
not the only one. It is one principle in the science of 
society, but it is not the whole of that science. Other 
elements are indispensable to the right working of the 
system, one of which has been adverted to. The error 
has been in supposing that because the Individuality 
which is already realized in society has not ultimated 
in harmony, that Individuality itself is in fault. In- 
stead of destroying this one true element of order, and 
returning to a worse condition from which we have 
emerged, the scientific method is to investigate further, 
and find what other or complimentary principles are 
necessary to complete the well-working of the social 
machinery. 

Regretting that the whole circle of the new principles 
of society, of which the Sovereignty of the Individual 
is one, can not be presented at once, I invite you, La- 
dies arid Gentlemen, as occasion may offer, to inform 
yourselves of what they are, that you may see the subject 
in its entire connection of parts. In the mean time I 
submit to your criticism, and the criticism of the world, 
what I have now offered, with the undoubting convic- 
tion that it will endure the ordeal of the most searching 
investigation, and with the hope that however it may 
shock the prejudices of earlier education, you will in 
the end sanction and approve it, and aid, by your devoted 
exertions, the inauguration of The True Constitution of 
Government, with its foundations laid in the Sovereignty 
of the Individual. 



$Jj* $nmtt nf |ncifti}.-IJn. 1. 



THE 



TRUE CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT 



SOVEREIGNTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL, 



AS THE FINAL DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANTISM, 
DEMOCRACY, AND SOCIALISM. 



STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 



NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM J. BANEK, 

201 WILLIAM STREET. 
SOLD BY ALL. BOOKSELLERS. 

1851. 



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